The Diffusion of Information Emerging Scientific Fields: A Different Methodological Approach to Measure Collaboration in Research

Abstract

The fields of innovation studies, entrepreneurship and science and technology studies are all relatively new additions to the academic landscape. Research on the development of these new fields has been undertaken, yet there has not been a thorough investigation of the co- authorship networks that shape them on an individual researcher level. As co-authorship networks best represent the diffusion of tacit information between researchers it is of importance to understand the structural characteristics that facilitate the flow of knowledge. The main method employed here is social network analysis of bibliometric data spanning ten years for the 20 most influential journals for these three fields. Additionally, a text-mining approach is used to uncover their differing research themes and their importance. Together it provides the most holistic and thorough investigation of this theme done to date. The results show that the fields are less separated than earlier research has argued. Many of the researchers involved are not limited to publishing within one of the fields, but rather publish in several of them. There has been a convergence of the fields in that sense. There are, however, differences in the collaborative structures of the fields. The fields are highly fractured in terms of collaboration between researchers; however they are all characterized by tightly knit groups of researchers that collaborate extensively. Further, the research themes are not as similar as thought previously. Overall innovation and entrepreneurship are closer to one another than to STS. Some individuals in the network have proven to be extremely important for the diffusion of information, while most are not particularly central for diffusion because of the fractured characteristics.

The fields of innovation studies, entrepreneurship and science and technology studies are all relatively new additions to the academic landscape. Research on the development of these new fields has been undertaken, yet there has not been a thorough investigation of the co- authorship networks that shape them on an individual researcher level. As co-authorship networks best represent the diffusion of tacit information between researchers it is of importance to understand the structural characteristics that facilitate the flow of knowledge. The main method employed here is social network analysis of bibliometric data spanning ten years for the 20 most influential journals for these three fields. Additionally, a text-mining approach is used to uncover their differing research themes and their importance. Together it provides the most holistic and thorough investigation of this theme done to date. The results show that the fields are less separated than earlier research has argued. Many of the researchers involved are not limited to publishing within one of the fields, but rather publish in several of them. There has been a convergence of the fields in that sense. There are, however, differences in the collaborative structures of the fields. The fields are highly fractured in terms of collaboration between researchers; however they are all characterized by tightly knit groups of researchers that collaborate extensively. Further, the research themes are not as similar as thought previously. Overall innovation and entrepreneurship are closer to one another than to STS. Some individuals in the network have proven to be extremely important for the diffusion of information, while most are not particularly central for diffusion because of the fractured characteristics.